


Baby

by Miss_Bubblegum



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Baby, Lucretia's A+ Decision Making, M/M, Memory Loss, Mentions of labor, Trans Character, premature baby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 14:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11738673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Bubblegum/pseuds/Miss_Bubblegum
Summary: It was only supposed to take a year to save her friends and the world, maybe two.Lucretia is facing unforeseen obstacles though.Davenport goes into labor on his birthday, two months early, and she has to ask herself what she's willing to do to save her friends and this world.And what to do with this baby.





	Baby

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea a while ago and wanted to share it with all of you sooner rather than later so this is going up in chapters-probably 2 or 3. 
> 
> I would like to thank all my friends at wooden ducks anonymous for not kicking me out of the server when I start angst int up the place. 
> 
> I couldn't have done it without you guys.

Things do not go as planned.

That at least is obvious. 

All the plans she had worked so hard on to make sure Davenport was going to have a good life when he did not remember was rendered moot when the truth of his mental capacities came to light. 

Forgetting more or less lobotomized him. 

Her plan was to have him and Merle settle down in a nice cottage together, to let them be a family with the baby that was due in a month or two. They would be happy and together and they would be fine.

Instead, after Magnus passed out from the shock of remembering, she walked into the living room of the ship and saw a sight that horrified her.

From the distress Davenport was feeling, the baby had decided to come early.

Davenport was screaming, and Merle was trying to blink the static out of his sight and mind while delivering a much too small baby. 

She wanted to help, but felt frozen in the doorway with wide eyes as she watched in horror as Davenport was in pain and Merle was trying his damndest to help best he could. 

She could do nothing but watch, before Merle looked over at her by chance and yelled  
“You! Sit by his side and make him more comfortable!”

She scrambled to his side, looking for something to use as a cushion to make the floor seem more….comfortable. She saw the robes hanging on the back of the chairs the two were using while playing cards earlier and pulled them down. 

Lucretia folded one up and gently lifted Davenport up a little to slide it under him. With the other, she balled it up and put Davenport’s hands onto it,  
“Squeeze and tug at this when it hurts, I will be right here.” She told him and got behind him, pulling his head into her lap so he wouldn’t thrash and hurt his head, pushing his bangs up and out of his face, trying to soothe him in such a painful time. 

“I’m Davenport,” he told her with a sigh in between contractions, looking very worn out. 

“My name is Lucretia, how long has the contractions been going for?”

“Davenport.”

“What?” Lucretia asked in utter confusion. 

“That’s all he has said for the past hour, I think it’s all he can say. I don’t even know if he is understanding the instructions I’m giving him. I don’t know how far along he is but he looks too small to be full term.”

“That’s…..all he has said?”

“Yep. I’m counting how long between contractions myself though, they are pretty close. It looks like the baby is coming soon.”

“How soon is soon?”

“Within the next hour. This is going really fast, I don’t like it. Labor progressing this fast is really traumatic for the parent….Do you know where the other parent is? They might be able to calm him down more.”

Lucretia was staring at Merle in almost horror. What if Davenport died like this? What if the baby did?

Merle would never forgive her either way.

“The other father is….occupied.”  
“What the fuck is wrong with him that he can’t be here? His kid is being born!”

They did have to stop talking then, as another contraction hit Davenport, and they focused solely on him again. 

“I’m so sorry, Captain,” She whispered to Davenport as tears welled up in his eyes, unable to do anything.  
He looked up at her and the breath caught in her throat at the level of trust she saw in his eyes. 

He trusted her, not even knowing why. He saw the person who destroyed his mind and trusted her. 

“Don’t look down, Captain,” she told him, trying to save him the memory of seeing so much blood and knowing it was for nothing.  
She mentally tallied the months in her head as she tried to soothe him. 7 months. He was seven months along with the baby, that was a perfectly survivable stage of development, right?  
The baby wouldn’t die immediately, right? She told herself, lying to herself.

When the baby was born, Lucretia kept her eyes firmly on Davenport’s face, not wanting to see evidence of how much she messed up their lives, to see what she caused.  
(She knew that sudden emotional upheavals and trauma can induce labor, the forgetting did this.)

“Hey lady, can you get me a knife or scissors or something? Need to cut the cord.” Merle said in a surprisingly calm voice.

She looked up and saw Merle holding a slightly squirming very small baby, a very much alive baby. 

When she returned with a pair of scissors, Merle was holding the baby in red cloth and Davenport’s hands were empty as he looked at Merle and the baby. 

“Here,” She handed the scissors to Merle and he cut the cord, wrapping the baby more securely in the red cloth that was Davenport’s uniform.

Davenport held his hands out towards him, to be handed his baby to hold for the first time.

She instantly felt like she was intruding on a private moment as she saw the two guys faces while holding their baby, Davenport looked at the new baby with open and crushing love, the kind that would drive someone to kill for another. The kind that makes someone to do anything for the one they love. 

Merle looked on with the exact same kind of love.  
If Davenport was truly a half-wit, if she hurt him that badly when saving the rest of her friends then she couldn’t let him go down on the world. She could not let him be in danger from the world, if she had disabled his mind in such a way.  
Merle would never buy that he had married a guy who could only say his own name. 

She couldn’t make Davenport, lobotomized as he was, go down on a world where he would be on his own without help. She would have to keep him around and look after him herself….

Merle couldn’t just live alone either, especially when the story she set up for him to live would be of two husbands living together with their child. 

She had to make a new plan for Merle. A new cover where he could be happy….

The next day, making sure that everyone was in their rooms and relatively safe, she had a plan.

She would take Merle to the beach, to the colony where several of his relatives lived. He liked the beach and had some ins already with the dwarves there. 

When she arrived as close as she dared get to the colony she was going to bring merle to, and went to fetch him from his room. 

 

He’s not there.

With a suspicion she turned to look in Davenports room, hoping to all the gods that she was wrong.  
She wasn’t

Inside of Davenports room she saw Merle looking down at the little baby in the crib Magnus carved for them as soon as he heard that his two friends were expecting.  
The baby was holding onto a little pillow that Lucretia had seen in Merle’s room a few times, the only thing in the ship, the only thing available to them that the baby was bigger than. 

“Merle, it’s time to go home,” she said softly, walking towards him, and she winced at the glare she saw leveled at her.

“When I’m gone what will happen to the kid?” he said, and she saw where it was going, he wanted to bring the baby with him. But she could not risk the child of her friends be passed off to some couple in the dwarf colony, as Merle would have no idea that he should keep the baby close, not know it was his. 

“The father is going to take care of him. And I will take care of him too.” She said in a no nonsense tone, taking his arm and pulling him after her, “It really is time for you to go home, Merle. Follow me.”

Merle wouldn’t remember this, she told herself later, he wouldn’t remember that she had to pull with all her strength to get him away from his son who he didn’t consciously know was his. His subconscious fatherly bond was strong sure, but if she could just separate him from the baby it would just go away, but this was just temporary anyway. Soon she could go get him and he would be with his love and his son again.

Merle learned that leaving a child to people better equipped to take care of them was alright. 

He didn’t think twice about leaving his kids to their mother years later, she had a house and a family close by. She could take care of the kids as he tried to figure out where home was to him.

 

Lucretia made sure to check on Davenport and the baby often, making sure they needed nothing and were ok, doing so immediately before and after setting up her other friends lives and bringing them to said lives. 

The night after she brought the last person to their home, Taako and his stagecoach, she went to check on Davenport again, and he seemed slightly aware that she was upset, motioning her to sit down.

He then handed her the baby, his little boy who was barely a week and a half old and so very very fragile. 

“Davenport, your son is so handsome, like his father. You must be very proud,” she said trying to blink away the tears that were welling up.

He nodded, grinning and looked at his baby in his friend’s arms. It wasn’t until the baby started making unhappy soft noises that he took him back, and tried to make the infant happy again. Or at least go to sleep. 

“Your baby seems happy to be with you,”she told him, “Seems healthy too.”

“Angus.”

“What?” This was the first time he had said something that was not his own name to her, making Lucretia quite shocked indeed.

“Angus,” he said again, nodding to the baby.

And so the baby was named Angus.

 

It wasn’t as if Lucretia wasn't trying to find the relics quickly, not at all, but just reclaiming her staff took several days where she was preoccupied by thinking about Davenport and Angus. Was Angus ok? Could Davenport even take care of him properly, the way he was? What if something happened, would Davenport know what was going on, would he even understand and be able to help?

The other relics were going to be buch harder to find too-maybe taking weeks or months of research and following up on leads, staking out cities or cultural centers to hear a whisper of a rumor of what tragedy happened recently regarding the relics. 

Could she go through with leaving a defenseless baby alone with someone with less than a full mind for that long? If something happened to him not only would she feel overwhleming guilt and sadness over what happened, but what would the captain think? Would he blame himself only when he regained his thoughts and sense? Would he blame her? Would he be able to deal with the fact that his child died and he could do nothing to help? What would she tell Merle?

It was with a heavy heart after a sleepless night of her giving little Angus some formula and cuddles as Davenport slept, that she came to the only possible decision she could.

She would have to bring Angus to a caregiver, to look after him as she searched for the relics. It would be temporary, of course, she could bring him back to his father after the relics were recovered. It would be a year at most-surely he would understand right?

“Angus you would understand if i did this right?” she asked the very small infant, who yawned in response.

“I knew you would understand. You’re such a good smart boy.”

Preparations for this was harder than before-she had to vet anyone who could possibly hope to care for such a precious child, such a vulnerable child. She could not just rely on Angus speaking up or figuring out what to do if something was wrong or off, he wasn’t an adult. He couldn’t even lift his head up yet. 

Telling Davenport what she was doing right now was pointless — she didn’t know if he comprehended what she said to him ever, but how to convey the fact that she would take his son away? To a better, safer place, sure, one that could care for him better, but away from him.

Captain Davenport would understand, he would understand the logic of having someone more capable look after a baby, especially since it would be only a short time. 

 

After all the looking for a suitable caregiver she came across a retired detective, a good man who just never married, was willing to go under a zone of truth to interview under. He just wanted to help, he loved children because of how innocent they were and how that innocence made him feel like he was doing right in the world. He was up for the challenge of raising a small boy, and was willing to send Lucretia updates and pictures as long as Angus was with him. 

And of course, completely willing to give Angus back again the moment his parents were back able to care for him again.

So she told him that she was going to bring the baby around in 3 weeks and left to arrange things back on the starblaster. 

Packing all of the backup supplies they had for Angus was not hard at all, it was far more difficult to reliably pack up the things they were actively using. 

Throughout it all, she felt guilty that she was robbing both angus and Davenport time together but it had to be done.

(Throughout the packing process she kept putting faded t-shirts of Davenport and Merle's in with Angus’ things. She wanted him to have a bit of home with him) 

When the day came to bring Angus to his new home, Lucretia woke up Davenport early, handing him Angus. She packed up the last of the things, all the things they needed for a baby until the end. 

“Davenport, say goodbye to Angus.” She told him, with the bags she was going to bring to the McDonald house with her.

“Angus…” he said softly with a lot of feeling to his son who burbled at him.

“Davenport you are going to be apart from him for a long time ok? But Angus is going to be ok. He's going to be safer than he is here and well cared for. When I get the relics back and save this world from what I've done then you can reunite with him and be happy with Merle once more.”

He didn't seem to understand, just smiling at his baby as he held the tiny infant. Occasionally he said Angus’ name with all the love and happiness in what seemed like the world. When at last she could not bear a single more moment of watching — knowing that if she left it longer she would never be able to go through with what she had to do, she spoke.

“Davenport, can I hold Angus?” She said softly, moving closer to him. 

He looked up, and with utter trust and confidence in his eyes and expression, handed her the baby. 

“Davenport I promise it's going to be ok. It will all be better soon,” she promised with tears in her eyes as she walked away with Davenport’s heart.

After the baby was settled and Lucretia had told Mr McDonald to contact her if anything happened, she started the long trek home. She walked slowly, not wanting to face what she had done too quickly. She didn't want to make her captain unhappy any sooner than she has to. 

(You had to, she kept telling herself)

When she entered the ship, she saw Davenport run up to her smiling. Then he stopped, looking a little confused, looking around.

“Angus?” He asked

“Davenport, he's safer now. He's being taken care of and neither of us have to worry about what happens if you aren’t capable of caring for him. He’s better off without us right now. When this is over you will have him back I promise.” She said softly to the gnome who looked more and more distressed by the second.

He shook his head backing up, bottom lip trembling and blinking his eyes like he wanted to cry, turning away. 

Lucretia heard him running around the ship, tearing up every room he was able to get into, in what she assumed was him frantically looking for his son. Making sure she was lying and being able to find his small baby. 

She knew he accepted the truth at about 4 am when she heard coming from his room, a broken sound that felt like it was tearing apart the one who was making it. 

She knew then that she would have to be quick and be perfect because she never wanted to keep her captain in such pain for any amount of time.

When she tried to go into Davenport’s room to move the crib to one of the unused bedrooms, (probably Merle’s), she found the door locked. 

Still hearing sounds of anguish and emotional distress from there she accepted that she would have to wait a little longer to move it. After Davenport was ready to come out she would move the baby things to another room to make it easier for him. There was no reason to make it harder on him after all. 

The emotional grieving was getting concerning, with her hearing sobbing and crying coming from the room at all hours feeling more and more anxiety and dread by the minute. 

It took almost 3 days to realize that she was the only one taking food from the larder, she had assumed he came out when she was asleep to eat something and bring water at least back into his room, but she was not confident that he even took water anymore.

She sat outside his room that night, watching his door to see if he even attempted to come out and get provisions, wanting to be wrong, but preparing for the worst the entire night. She wrote down things about angus on notebook paper. She wrote that he was born prematurely, that he seemed to love Merle, how Davenport would rock him to sleep and how Angus would get fussy if he wasn't held by his dad for a long time.  
How Angus smiled at his dad for the first time a week ago and she saw her captain light up, trying to get Angus to smile for her for the next few hours so she could see it. 

How Davenport watched him all the time his first week of life, to make sure he was still breathing. 

She took away any significance the date August 24th had for Davenport. She wasn’t sure that he could remember the day it happened she just wanted to cover her bases. 

She saw that date on a calender in Merle's room when she was moving the crib in there to not jog memories. The date was circled and had ‘DUE DATE!!!!!!!’ written on there in big letters. 

Angus was 2 months premature after all.

 

She got up off the floor of the hallway, gathering the papers she wrote over the course of the night, and put an ear to the door. 

She could barely hear breathing. Good, she could still save him if she did this.

2 hours later, as she tried to make something light so her captain wasn’t sick on eating rich food after starving for days, he stumbled in. 

He looked scared, which made Lucretia stop what she was doing and sat him down bringing him a glass of water. Then she fed him the soup she was making for him. 

Davenport was cheerful again, looking blankly at her when tried to convey complex ideas, or when she talked about children at all.

Lucretia did it to save his life, he would have died if she hadn't taken Angus from his memories. She had to remind herself of that every day.

The facts did not help when he touched his stomach or chest and looked confused and lost.

The facts did not help when she got a letter from Mr. McDonald saying that he did want to send her little update letters about Angus even when nothing was wrong. He said that Angus would not stop crying all of his waking hours for the first 5 days he was there but finally stopped mid-morning on th 6th day. 

Davenport for years would not stop standing so quietly, as if he was listening for something that could be quiet in the next room. 

He did not stop pausing in what he was saying while looking distressed for years after that even. 

He clearly didn't know why he was upset. 

And now he only said his own name, Angus was taken from his vocabulary.


End file.
